Topic: Health Care
What's Wrong with Having to Choose Between Food and Medicine. The argument for universal health care is that people shouldn't have to hoose between food and medicine. But somebody will make the choice.by rtbohan
(Libertarian)
Saturday, January 12, 2008
The slogan which underlies the current race to "fix Medicare" or provide universal health care, is that people "shouldn't have to choose between buying food and buying medicine.
Why not?
Life is about makiing choices. Some times the choices are difficult and unpleasant. But since all of our individual resources--money, time, strength--are limited, what we can acquire is also limited. Any time we make a choice we are forced to choose against alternate uses of our limited resources. Some times we make the wrong choice.
But getting out of having to make a choice means we must allow someone else to make the choice for us. The ability to choose for ourselves is one of the blessings, as well as one of the burdens, of being rational adults.
If we decide that making the choice between food and medicine is too difficult of unpleasant for us to make, the politicians will be glad to do it for us. The will decide how ;much money we have of food, clothing, shelter and transportation, as well as medicine. They will take the money in taxes and out of pensions. They will determine how much of what they have taken they will spend on medicine and health care fot us as individuals, and by taking it they guarantee that we cannot spend it on food or anything else.
The history of medicare shows that the percentage of our medical care the government pays for has been constantly going down, and the amount they take from the individual is constantly going up. There is no reason to believe this will change if we univeralize the programs.
Liberty, which our constitution was meant to preserve, means it is our obligation to make choices--good, bad, or indifferent for ourselves.
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In this society, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Except for extremely rare cases, the only way to become wealthy is to be born that way. Some would say, a man should be able to pass the fruits of his labor on to his children. But rich people in America don't do that- they pass the wealth that was stolen by their great-grandfathers on to their children. (Stolen by the factory owners who treated workers like slaves, by the landlords who defrauded their tenants at every turn, and by the literal slave-owners that are a large portion of the ancestry of today's rich.)
What will happen as the epidemic of poverty spreads, as people are unable to find good paying jobs and unable to make ends meet as banks, hospitals, lawyers and credit card companies cheat them? At some point, one of two things will happen. YOU have to choose which you prefer. Either the government will take some of your wealth to provide for the necessities (not luxuries, just necessities like food and medicine) of the poor. Or, a mob of those poor, strong and well-armed will come to your house and *literally* take the necessities they need over your dead body. I think you will much prefer the orderly way of the government providing for their welfare with some of your money than the alternative.
The poor will always be amoung you, the Bible tells us. However, the poorest American has life much better than the majority of the living people on the planet and probably better than 98% of the people who came before our generation.
In my lifetime, my Great Grandparents did not have running water, electricity, or a furnace in the house they lived in here in Michigan. My Great Grandfather died before he was eligible for Medicare and so never had health insurance and probably couldn't have imagined what it even was.
As a young boy, my mother was forced to go on food stamps for about 3 months until she could find a job to provide for my 5 brothers and sisters after our father left us. She worked several part-time jobs and never had health insurance for us. We got by just fine. I remember to this day the stress that being on "the dole" put on my mother. She lost 30lbs and couldn't sleep for days due to having to accept handouts from the government. Although the long hours she subsequently worked were hard on her, she would often quote her father and say "hard work never killed anyone."
Although some of what you say has a kernel of truth to it...the rich will always tend to manipulate the system to their favor, but ever was it so. I for one, would rather die a poor and broken man knowing I made my way through life honestly than to sleep on a cloud of feathers that was gained through the force of the state from my fellow citizens.
PS: a few examples of single generation wealth made in America
Bill Gates Warren Buffet Steve Jobs Donald Trump Andrew Grove
Your comment that "Except for extremely rare cases, the only way to become wealthy is to be born that way" is incorrect. You should read the book The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas Stanley and William Danko. Most millionaires in this country are first generation self-made millionaires. They earned their riches through hard work and frugal living. Stanley and Dankos' research found that "only 19 percent [of millionaires] recieve income or wealth of any kind from a trust fund or an estate." and that "more than half have never recieved as much as $1 in inheritance."
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